A long time ago in a land perhaps not so far away there was a very wise and powerful King. He loved His Son very much and to honor His Son he spent a very long time going over maps and making treaties and paying huge sums of money and time to secure a marvelous kingdom for His Son to reign over when the time was right. Soon after acquiring the last of the territory and importing the last few supplies however, the King’s herald rebelled and convinced a part of the Mighty King’s army to rebel with him. The rebellion was crushed and the herald and his armies doomed. But the herald and his army escaped into what was to become the Prince’s kingdom. The herald after looking over his ill-won kingdom declared that it was his and that the peasants whom the Mighty King had sent to live in the kingdom to serve him and his son would soon serve only their new master. The herald (being a sneaky and underhanded sort) managed to trick the wife of the elder peasant into violating an important command that the Mighty King had given them. Fearing the Mighty King’s wrath the elder chose the herald for his children to serve. The years passed and the Mighty King(who was of a special sort that did not age as the peasants did) watched as the years passed and the generations of peasants grew old and died without ever even thinking of the King who still sent supplies and help to the kingdom even as the people served his wicked herald. The King however had a plan. He, His brother and His Son had carefully planned an attack that would defeat the herald once and for all. The King sent his warriors and messengers carefully into the Kingdom of his Son. Carefully choosing a few of the peasants, He set the plan in motion and shepherded the events to ensure that when the time came the victory over the herald and his armies would be absolute. When the Time for the plan to come into full effect came near the Son himself entered His own kingdom as a peasant. He lived with a simple peasant family and learned a simple good trade under a man he called father. When the time to fight came however, He willingly left his simple satisfying life and marched into battle. He won victories over many in the herald’s army and several times resisted the herald’s personal attempts to woo him to oppose the Mighty King as most of the other peasants had. But the Prince’s resolution became stronger as he marched. He began training the peasants to fight as he fought He took peasants that were simple men and trained them to be mighty warriors worthy of the name of the King that they bore on their foreheads. They would be completely different soldiers from those of the King’s army or that of the wicked herald. He told them who he was and some of them believed him. “The Prince from afar”, who their fathers had told them truly ruled this kingdom. They slowly learned to fight as the Prince taught them. However, as he approached the final battle his new soldiers deserted him for in their fear they forgot who walked forward with them. They saw the other peasants and the armies of the herald and lost courage. The Prince knew this was going to happen. While their desertion hurt him, for he loved the simple peasant soldiers as his own brothers, he marched forward because he knew that their lives in the coming war depended on him. The Prince walked alone to the predetermined site of the battle and stood alone against the most powerful of the herald’s warriors, including the herald himself. He was struck down by a mighty blow. The herald and his warriors rejoiced thinking that they had won, but then the plan of the King, His Brother and the Prince was revealed. The Prince had allowed himself to be knocked down, but then drawing upon all He was as the Son of the Mighty King he rose from the ground and defeated the herald and his warriors. He broke the power of the Herald’s armies over the peasants. The herald would hold no hold over them if they simply declared their allegiance to the Prince and his Father. At the very site of his falling the Prince built a fortress to gather and train the peasants to become soldiers for the King. For although the herald was defeated his punishment would wait while the King prepared it. A punishment fit for a traitor of the highest order and all his armies with him. So the defeated herald was allowed to run free with the remains of his army and while at times they grew in power, the armies of the Prince could always beat them. The armies of the herald knew that they were already beaten and that they could never again stand against the armies of the King or his Son. The Prince, after a time of encouraging and strengthening his new troops returned to his Father’s castle to make ready for his Return and the final judgment of the herald and those who allied with him. He promised to sent the King’s Brother to help the peasants and stay with them until he returned and to offer them guidance and the ear of the King whenever they should need it. Long years passed and the army of peasants grew as many came to the fortress built by the fall of the Prince. The King’s Brother stayed with the peasants as promised and the armies of the Prince quickly changed the face of the kingdom. They were taught new ways to live and new ways to act. For as soldiers for the Prince they had to act accordingly. As time passed and children learned from their parents the ways of the Prince’s soldiers but each of them had to go to the fortress to begin their training as soldiers for the Prince in their own right. Generations of soldiers were raised up and the herald was disheartened for soldiers of the king were no longer his allies and would therefore not share his punishment when the prince returned from his father’s castle. So he grew in hatred for the soldiers of the Prince and began attacking them viciously and cruelly. He was not without sources of information and would often attack soldiers in places that their armor didn’t quite reach or blindside them with attacks of devious cruelty. Then he happened upon something that made the rest of his attacks seem placid and prankish. He began setting up fortresses of his own near the fortress of the Prince and he would have people who were in his service stand out front telling the peasants that this was the true fortress of the Prince. Many many of the peasants were deceived and herald was glad that so many would follow him to his punishment. As the peasants grew greater in number they began to discover new parts of the kingdom and new things which they had never seen before. Some who hated the King and served the herald said that the King never really had existed at all and that the parts of the Kingdom that were being explored were proof. They drew many from the false fortresses into their argument and over time the voice of the soldiers of the Prince quieted. Embarrassed at the reports from the explorers which seemed to prove that, indeed there never was a King and that it was merely a simple myth like so many stories they told their children. What they didn’t know was that the explorers were finding not less evidence of the king but more. His markers and signposts covered the new areas and buildings and structures built for the pleasure of the peasants. The buildings and bridges had plaques on them that said “Built by the Mighty King with love for My People”. Those who hated the king lied about the findings and claimed that things were not the way they appeared and in some cases destroyed the plaques and milestones brought back from the new lands to prevent them from ever being brought forward as proof of the Mighty King’s Existence. So the soldiers of the Prince gradually became quiet on things like exploration and discovery clinging simply to the emotion that they felt when they talked to the King’s Brother and read the copies of the diary that the Prince left behind for them to learn about him. The generations fell away until one generation of the Prince’s soldiers did something terrible. Tired after a long and hard victory over a horrible attack of the herald and his allies this generation came back from their battle and desired nothing more than rest. When their children stood up to fight against them in the way that all children fight their parents the tired generation who defeated a horrible attack of the herald and his allies sat down and did nothing. Their children then grew up without knowledge of how to stand up and fight for what they believed in. So while they learned their lessons from their parents (the few that were saved from disaster) the children of the tired generation knew nothing of fighting and very little of the King. The grandsons of the tired generation were raised like women. The herald had devised a wonderfully evil plot. Because the children of the tired generation were not taught completely and did not know how to learn on their own they knew little of how to raise their own children. The herald whispered in the ears of a few peasants a way to raise children that would make it much harder for those children to learn about the King. He told the sons of the tired generation that it was not right for warriors to be raised. Not knowing how to fight, they accepted this proclamation they let their own sons be raised to be quiet and meek. The new generation of men found emptiness and a lack of fulfillment wherever they went doing whatever they did. They lost their ability to fight for their women and many of their generation died because of it. A few learned to fight taught carefully by the brother of the King and a few of the earlier generations who did not sit down when their time came, but the vast majority of the generation were lost and confused for they had been taught that what they knew was all there was. Yet they found their hearts yearning for more.
